As far north as we're going to get!

Woke to a grey, damp morning after a very comfortable night’s sleep. The Skagen Hotel is certainly quiet! Breakfast was really delicious – eggs, bread, marmalade, honey, pancakes etc with superb taste and flavours - think we would certainly stay here again! Walked down to the bus station after checking out – it was only a couple of hundred yards. It was milder than the previous evening. With the grey clouds and drizzle it felt like an October morning in Ireland – quite homely really! The bus deposited us at the airport in just a few minutes. Norwegian Airways have adopted Ryanair’s system of self check-in and bag drop, which worked well though we needed assistance with using the machine which scanned our travel documentation. Willie found a Kr200 note (about £20) just before going through Security. He handed it to one of the women on Security who looked surprised – possibly she thought for a moment that it was a bribe! Claire happily declared that she was carrying no liquids – forgetting that she had packed her sponge bag in the hand baggage, but the super efficient Norwegian bag scanner soon caught her out – with confiscation of a bottle of water and some hair gel. She was lucky she wasn’t dragged away, kicking and screaming, for interrogation! Our flight for Tromsø departed at 11.50am. The cloud cover was very thick so it was quite some time before we climbed into the sunshine. The journey was short – about forty minutes and the cloud a lot thinner when we reached Tromsø so we had a lovely view of the mountains, forests and lakes in the area. Some of the mountainms were topped by snow with very distinct snow lines everywhere. We got the bus into town – it took us down a very long tunnel and we were surprised to reach a roundabout with four exits – all inside the tunnel! (Someone has said that if Mount Everest was in Norway, the Norwegians would drill a hole through it!) The Radisson Hotel was only a short walk from the terminus and was very plush. At reception they were under the impression that we were staying only one night instead of two but that was easily put right. We deposited our bags in the room and in minutes were back out in town and headed first to a glass blowing studio called "Blaast" where we could watch the work in process.

Blowing a wine glass inside a mould

Two young ladies were working together on producing the most beautiful wine glasses – Willie had never really seen anything like this apart from on TV, though Claire had in Spain. It was amazing to see how it was done. It took easily five minutes to make a single glass and when we were there, two had to be destoyed as the bases cracked at the last stage in the process – very frustrating for the workers! We then walked the short distance to an attraction called “Polaria”. This features polar sea and land life and was fascinating. First we went to see the bearded seals (three of them) being fed. They were swimming in a very deep water pool from which they emerged when the keepers arrived with fish, They were enormous creatures, easily ten feet long and very heavy. They could do tricks and obey instructions and were obviously very intelligent. Then we went to a short film shown on a five screen panorama which was made in the Spitzbergen area. The scenery and wild life shots were absolutrely breathtaking. We were then invited to walk through a a simulated polar landscape complete with polar bear, reindeer

and penguins and emerged under the deep water pool so that we could see the seals swimming above us – so fast and agile in the water. There were tanks of fish including baby cod, one of which Willie caught in his hand .(Was he allowed to do that? Probably not!) There were also some king crabs which were originally introduced into the Bering Sea from the Pacific and are now spreading rapidly down the coast of Norway causing some enviromental concern. They can grow as much as two metres across. The crab fishermen aren’t complaining – they are getting fifty euro a kilogram for them but conventional fishermen are less than pleased as their nets are being damaged by the creatures. Before leaving we found a slide in the form of a flume for the use of children but we both went down it when no one was looking – it was amazingly fast. (Yes, two big kids!)
In the evening we went for a meal at a Thai restaurant - - very nice but pricy. We decided not to spend £30 or more on wine there! Sadly, it was cloudy so there was no chance of seeing the Aurora Borealis.